Cinquante-neuf

Man, another week has passed.. Time really does fly. I only have a month and a half of life left in Switzerland, and I can hardly believe it. I'm just trying to enjoy the time I have left here (which so far I am, thoroughly) and get the most out of it by planning lots of things to do so that no time is wasted. 

This last week I had to go to school all five days.. horrifying, right? But it passed suprisingly quickly..

Monday my history powerpoint was due. I will have to present that in two weeks. We also had our geography test, which was on the Swiss cantons and their capitals, European countries and capitals, and the countries of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. I had studied and it paid off because I got a perfect score which will raise my geography grade since on the other tests (the non-map tests) I usually only get a three or four. As for the weather, it was really gross and warm out..

Tuesday a cold front came through and it was rainy in the afternoon, which was nice because before, the temperatures had been in the ninties and it was too hot to be comfortable in school. We had a math test which I got 5.3 on. In gym we did another rotation where we split into teams of eight to ten and then had to compete against each other at soccer, unihockey, and volleyball. I was with Bérénice, Andréanne, and Mahélia (another girl in my class) but because there weren't enough students the professors came to be on our team. We won at volleyball and lost at everything else but it was fun, despite the opposing team being really over-aggressive and competitive..

Wednesday we had drawing class. We are now working on enlarging an image from Les aventures de Tintin (they are classic Belgian comics from the thirties and onward) using a square grid.. personally I find this painstaking and I don't think it has much to do with art, because it's just copying, and not creating, but that's okay. We have to put Titeuf, a character from a modern Swiss comic series that has been super popular in France, into the frame. In mine he will be peeking out from behind a door.

Thursday was boring and uninteresting. In biology we went to the computer lab and looked up some pollutants organiques persistants (DDT and other such chemicals that don't break down in nature.) That's about all I even remember.

Friday was also pretty standard. We had our last history course taught by our beloved student teacher, who will, for the rest of the year, sit in the back of the class taking notes as the normal teacher takes over (who is not the best replacement ever..) Actually, though it was technically his last course, he didn't really teach anything because we just watched history presentations (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot.)  In English class my teacher asked the boy who sits next to me about what he will be doing next year, because Friday was his last day of school. He is a semi-professional basketball player and will be touring Europe with the junior Swiss national team for a month or two.  After that he asked a bunch of others what they are doing next year, including me, and somehow this morphed into a exercise where my classmates interviewed me for forty minutes and the teacher skipped his entire lesson plan. I can't believe how hard it is to speak in English now.. it's still pretty easy for me to write, but to express myself by talking takes a lot of effort. I'm sure it will get easier quickly when I return but I was pretty astonished.

Yesterday we ate lunch early because Andréanne was going to get her haircut at 12h30. Around 14h00 I went to Fribourg where I met Sakshi. I had wanted to buy some comics to take home with me to the US, so we scoped them out. I ended up buying some from the Lucky Luke series, which I've read because my host family has them, and ordering some to pick up later from a series called Dick Hérisson which Andréanne recommended to me and I've borrowed from the library. Lucky Luke (pronounced "Lukey Luke") is a comedy/action series of cowboys in the American west, and Dick Hérisson is a detective/dark humour/circus freaks series (sorry, it's kind of hard to describe, though that pretty much sums it up) that takes place in France in the 1930s. After finding what I wanted we went to McDonald's because Sakshi wanted ice cream, but I didn't get anything. We sat down and she gave me a birthday present.. chocolate! After that we walked around before going home.

Today my host family and I ate a special birthday lunch for me together, and I got to choose what we ate, which was nice. We had sausages, chicken, and vegetables roasted on the grill. For dessert we had strawberries and meringues with double cream. They had also made a gâteau au vin cuit but everyone was too full to eat that. We went around 14h30 to go walking in this forest/marsh that has walking paths in it, for about an hour, and then when we got home we ate the gâteau.. I don't think I will be eating much supper tonight..!

Tomorrow and Tuesday we don't have school, which is pretty great. I am going to an AFS thing tomorrow and my friend Bérénice's house on Tuesday, but I'll write about that next week.

Cinquante-huit

Hello all. I don't have a lot of time today to write a blog post because I have some homework due tomorrow that I'm still working on, so I am going to skip writing about Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They were average school days anyway and not much worth describing happened. 

Thursday we didn't have school. I didn't have any plans, so I ended up hanging around the house. I did some homework, cleaned my room well, and otherwise just relaxed. 

Friday afternoon I went with Andréanne and Nicolas to the cinema in Bulle to see "Anges et Démons" (Angels and Demons), the movie based on the Dan Brown book. I don't know how long ago it came out in the US but here it is new as of a couple weeks. I read the book a couple years ago but had more or less forgotten the plot. The movie was okay, not amazing, but worth watching. Sometimes it was hard to understand because half the people talking had Italian accents, and of course it was voiced over in French. But I got the jist of it and enjoyed the movie. Friday night I worked on my history presentation for three hours but didn't finish it.

Saturday was by far the busiest day of the week. I woke up around 09h30, showered, ate breakfast, and then wrote in my journal for the first time in a couple months. At noon we ate lunch (foie, but because Andréanne and I don't like liver, we ate leftover spaghetti instead.) At 13h00 Claudine and Alicia were coming to get me so we could spend the afternoon together. They couldn't find the house though so they stopped at the village bistro and I walked over to meet them. Then, we went in the car to Fribourg. We played minigolf which took maybe an hour and a half.. I got second place. Then we went a cafe called le café du Belvedere in the old part of Fribourg. We sat on the terrace which has an amazing view over la vielle ville (the old city) and the river that goes through the city. After this it was maybe 16h30 so Claudine and Alicia drove me home. Since I only have less than two months left here and the free time is already filling up fast as I make plans with people, we decided to plan two things together. June 10th I am going to go to Fribourg afterschool on the train to celebrate my birthday with them, and July 9th we are going to Ballenberg if the weather is nice. Ballenberg is an open-air museum in alps, in the middle of the country. There are a bunch of original buildings that have been deplaced from all over Switzerland to the park, and you can walk around and look at the original architecture. (Click here to read the wikipedia article about it.)

When I got home it was around 17h30.. My host parents told me that we were going to an impromtu barbecue at Tata and José's house, with Andréanne and Nicolas's cousins. When we got there we had to wait for some of the others to get there for like an hour, so we played volleyball in the yard. Around 19h30 or 20h00 when everyone had arrived, we roasted cervelas (a popular type of sausage eaten almost exclusively in Switzerland) over the fire, which we ate on a picnic table outside. There were also various salads, bread, and roasted lamb. After eating we played volleyball some more, just until it was too dark, at which point we ate dessert (ice cream and une tarte au vin cuit.. a sort of pie with a base of vin cuit, which is a syrup of concentrated pear and apple juice. It sounds weird but it's really good.) Around 23h00 we went home, and I washed my feet (we'd been running around barefoot) before going to bed.

Today I woke up at 09h30. I started working on my homework after getting ready for the day. For lunch we ate fondue chinoise outside, in the back of the house where there is a patio with a big awning over it. It was about 85°F out but in the shade it was nice. After lunch I kept doing homework. I've finally finished my powerpoint but now I have to study for geography because we have a test tomorrow.

Though we have a normal five days of school this week, next weekend we have another four day weekend (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.) I am looking forward to that!

Cinquante-sept

Monday we got our history tests back. I was astonished and delighted to find that I had gotten 4.5, and the class average was four. It is cool getting good grades in a second language, I have to say. Other than that, nothing really interesting happened. My classmates had a two hour French test so I worked on grammar and reading.

Tuesday we started an ecology unit in biology class which is way more interesting than what we were doing before. In gym class we did a three class rotation. First we played soccer, then we did more high jumping, then we played basketball.

Wednesday we had art class, but in addition to working on our projects we had to help put up the annual art exposition. For our grade the teacher showed four things we had worked on: the alien painting, drawing of bottles, painting of a "symbolic message in a bottle", and normal/color drawings of leaves and insects. I had three things in, which were my alien, my message in a bottle, and my colored insect drawing. Andréanne had her drawings for each of the categories (she is really good at art.) The rest of the day we just had normal classes. After school I went to get the photos I had developed. It was super expensive, so I won't be taking any more before I leave. The quality wasn't that great because I think there may have been a problem with the film (or possibly with my camera's light meter) so I won't bother putting them up (I would have to scan them which would take ages.) I will just show them to everyone when I get back if you remind me about it!

Thursday we had to present short sketches in French class. I had one line: "J'oserai jamais aller lui parler." ("I would never dare to go talk to him".. I will remember that forever.) The morning classes were fine but in the afternoon we had biology and then double economy classes and it was ridiculously boring and long.

Friday I woke up with a slight sore throat and stuffy nose. In history class we went to the computer lab to work on our history projects about someone from the 18th century. I think I mentioned this before but it was a long, long time ago.. I am researching Antonio Vivaldi. We have to make a powerpoint presentation, which is due in a week. Then after that we will have to do a presentation for ten or fifteen minutes (yikes..) I have to present in about a month so I have time to prepare and everything. After history class we had German, math, and English. The math teacher gave us a lot of homework, so I went to a study hall during English class (I don't know if I talked about this before, but once in a while I go to study instead of English if I have a lot of homework to do, because for me English classes are really boring.) In the afternoon I had a chemistry lab but it was pretty boring.. it was about how much of different types of salts water could dissolve at different temperatures. After school I went to get my haircut and I had a nice time talking to the stylist. She had immigrated from Portugal (a long time ago now) so she asked me lots of questions about how I was adjusting, how the language was going, and so forth. It was nice. Then afterward I took the bus home. That evening Andréanne went to Fribourg with some of her friends to see a movie, and Béatrice went with the neighbor to see a movie. I could have gone with but I was feeling really tired so I ended up staying home.

Saturday I woke up around 07h30 and my sore throat/cough was way worse. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I ended up going back to bed and sleeping between 10h00 and 12h15. Then we ate lunch. After lunch, we went to my school to see the art exhibit with Bernard and Béatrice. When we got home I ended up sleeping some more from 15h00 to 18h30 or so. I can't even explain how tired my body was, it was pretty crazy. After eating dinner I felt somewhat better, at least I could keep my eyes open. In the evening Andréanne and I watched a French movie called Les Choristes (please wikipedia it.) I liked it a lot and it was a good movie though I didn't understand 100% of the film because there were no subtitles (nowadays I generally watch in French with French subtitles which makes it easier to follow, but this time there were none at all.)

Today I woke up around 08h00. I showered, ate breakfast (bread with butter and quince jelly), started writing this post, and read a book. Around 11h00 I went back to bed (I feel I should "listen to my body." I almost said that to my host family before realizing that it would probably not translate well.. but it doesn't matter, they understand that sick people should sleep!) At 14h00, after eating lunch, we headed to an arboretum in the canton Vaud. It was about one hour away in the car. The arboretum had an area of about 300 acres and took up most of a valley off of Lake Léman.. for Switzerland, at least in the part I live in, 300 acres without houses is huge. We first went to drink a coffee, then when we were looking at the map trying to decide on a route to take, a volunteer guide from the association asked us if we'd like to go on the guided tour. We decided to do that. It was about two hours long, but he stopped and talked really often. He was really knowledgeable and even knew the names of pretty much all the trees in English. Actually, the route we took went through "la forêt USA" which was a reconstruction (I don't think that's the right word, but you probably know what I mean) of the forests in the Pacific northwest. After the walk we looped around to see the rose bush section, though most of them weren't in bloom yet. At this point it was about 16h30 so we headed back to the visitor's center, bought an ice cream for the road, and headed home. I fell asleep in the car.

This week that is coming up, I only have school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday is "Le pont de l'Ascension", which is the day catholics celebrate the ascension of Jesus to heaven, and in Switzerland and some other European countries it's a public holiday. Then Friday we also don't have school. I don't have any real plans yet but I will probably do something fun.

Cinquante-six

Monday I had my test on twenty French authors from the 16th century up to the 20th century. It was pretty easy, actually, because I had studied for it. The questions were like "name three works by Victor Hugo", "identify the author that wrote these three passages", "identify the portraits of these authors", etc. Nothing on the test was a surprise so everyone had the chance to do well if they took the time to study. In geography we started a meteorology/climatology unit, that we will be spacing out through the rest of the year (probably a smart move on the teacher's part, because though he finds it fascinating, the rest of us would die of boredom if we did the whole unit straight through.) In history we watched the first part of a movie called "Le Roi danse" (The King is Dancing) because we had just finished a unit, and taken a test, on the 17th century (and lots more) in history. The movie was about King Louis XIV and a musician named Jean-Baptiste Lully.. Molière was in it too. It was weird from what I could tell, but also hard to understand what they were saying, so I only sort of followed the story. In math class we got back our math tests. I ended up getting 5.7, yessss. I am happy with that.

Tuesday we got our French tests, from Monday, back. I ended up getting 5.6, so I can't complain. In the afternoon we had gym, and it wasn't great. There were three classes (my whole grade) so we did a rotation.. first we practiced soccer then played a game for a while. After they taught us to do the high jump.. though of course it wasn't really high jump since the bar was pretty low (I mean it seemed high for us, trying for the first time, but it wouldn't for a jumper.) Then we had to do endurance running, which was no fun. In IT, Sylvain and I had to present a power point we'd made. The point is learning to use the software really well, so they gave us an easy topic: cities. We chose Minneapolis (his idea, not mine.) Anyway presenting was fine, for some reason I wasn't a bit nervous, though I still didn't talk fantastically.

Wednesday we kept working on our nature houses in art class. I moved on from my rough draft to the real (bigger-scaled) thing. It is hard getting the perspective right but I like the challenge. In math we are still working on functions and it's still really easy. In economy we are talking about the concentration of enterprises (vertical and horizontal, all that good stuff.)

Thursday was pretty boring in the morning. In the afternoon we had gym.. it was.. interesting. What we had to do was an orientation course, which apparently they do once per year. We loaded into a bus with two younger classes, and they drove us to the forest (like five minutes away.) I should specify that going to a "forest" doesn't mean the same thing in Switzerland that is does in Minnesota. Because this country is small, and very populated, you can't find the vast stretches of empty, undeveloped land that you can find in Minnesota. So a "forest" has lots of brush and trees and all, but it's more like a reserve of sorts, and not even that big. I bet we could have walked around the perimeter of it in an hour or two.. so yeah, not so big. There are lots of footpaths, usually some utility roads and some picnic areas and cabins for people to use. Even though it was the middle of the day there were some people there.. women walking their dogs or with a stroller, older couples hiking about, etc.

At the beginning we had to jog/walk to a cabin on the opposite side of the forest from where we started (it was kind of a long oval shape.) When we got there we split into groups of two (I was with Andréanne) and they gave each pair a map of the forest and all the paths and landmarks. On the map there were red circles marked, and some of them the teachers had highlighted. We had to go to the highlighted ones to find some markers. On the markers were written some letters and numbers- our job was to take the third letter, second number (or something like that. They change it every year.) The first area we went to we searched for maybe twenty minutes or a half an hour for the marker in the woods around the path (usually they are around the base of a tree) but we couldn't find it anywhere so we eventually gave up. We walked to where the second marker was but we weren't sure if we were in the right place so Andréanne went to go see if this cabin marked on the map was a little ways away- if so we would know we were in the right place. In the meantime I noticed the marker chained around the base of a tree right next to where we had been standing, so then I waited maybe five minutes for her to get back. We marked the number and letter down and then went on to find our third marker.

We decided to cut through the woods which seemed like a good idea until we were up to an area too thick with trees and brush to pass through, and which point we looked at the map legend that the color that part was on the map corresponded to "impassible area." Riiight.. oops. We should have read first. Eventually we found our way out to a path, heading in the right direction but still sort of far from the next marker. At this point I asked Andréanne how much time we had left, and when she checked her watch, we were horrified to see that we were supposed to be back at the bus... ten minutes prior! We figured out quickly on the map that we weren't that far away from the meeting point (thank god) so after four or five minutes of hard running we made it back. It was embarrassing being late to the bus full of younger students since they had had to wait for us to be able to go back to school, but thankfully there was another pair that came back just after us, so we weren't the very very last. After that the bus drove us back to school.. we were all gross and sweaty so we took the fastest showers ever in order to make it in time for the bus home.

About an hour or two after getting back from school, Béatrice drove Andréanne and I to Romont. I dropped off two rolls of film (all the pictures I've taken since coming here, so not a lot really) at the small photo shop. You know how I know I'm not in the US? They won't be ready until Wednesday, six days from when I dropped them off.. And I thought "next-day" photos were the slow option, but apparently that's only in a country where "hour photo" is standard. After the photos we went to the library where I got two new BDs of a series that Andréanne told me was good. So far (I'm about a third through the first one) she's right. Then after the library we went to the Migros to get something to drink because Andréanne had a watercolor class at seven but it was too early to already go. After, Béatrice and I went home where we ate a late dinner.

Friday was thankfully less stressful that Thursday. We kept watching "Le Roi danse" in history and did some more weather stuff in geography. In the afternoon I had two hours of study so I was able to get all my homework for the weekend done, and that's about it for the day.

Yesterday I went to Fribourg in the afternoon because Andréanne and Béatrice were going in the car, and I had wanted to go soon anyway. I had to buy a pair of pants because my favorite pair of jeans has a hole in it so that I can no longer wear them outside the house anymore, and on another pair I wear a lot the fabric is wearing really thin, and that could happen anytime now. I also bought some socks, and that's it.

Today we went to José and Tata's house for lunch. We ate on a picnic table outside and it was really nice. They had this spit where they made roasted chicken and it was delicious.. For dessert we had ice cream and strawberries. It's definitely starting to feel like summer is coming in Switzerland.

Cinquante-cinq

Âllo tout le monde. I just had a very average, normal Swiss week. School continues, and will for nine more weeks, and in the meantime things are just rolling along at a very steady pace.

Last Monday we talked about demographics in geography. I really like that class and the teacher's courses, though the teacher himself is kind of annoying. In math we worked on linear functions.. my classmates saw them for the first time last year but I first saw them three years ago. Sometimes I learn something new about them or there is different terminology but all in all doing linear functions feels a bit like learning the primary colors. Again. Needless to say, unless they start introducing some new material, I will ace the chapter test. In French I had to present Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the man who wrote The Little Prince and Night Flight, among other books. We have been doing a project for ages in French where each student had to pick a book and make a webpage on the author, then present it. (If you are really bored, go here to see mine.) Tomorrow we have a test on everyone's authors and I have a feeling I will do badly, so I am studying.. but not stressing about it. Anyway the presentation went fine, it was a pretty informal thing, but I was still nervous. My knowledge of the French language seems to disappear as soon as everyone's listening to me... funny how that is. Luckily I feel really comfortable with my class and they are understanding when it comes to any mistakes I might make in French (the know how it is from having to do German and English presentations) so things could have gone worse. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it was gray and rainy for basically the three days without pause. I happen to love the rain (and the fields needed it) so I found it nice.

Tuesday my host sister was sick so she didn't come to school. It is lonely without her around, since normally we walk together to and from the bus and between classes (when and if we switch.) On Tuesdays we eat lunch at school because we have gym in the afternoon.. I ate chicken with pasta and carrots. I wish school food was as good in the US (I actually look forward to eating cafeteria food here, who would have thought?) In gym we played volleyball and afterward we had to do this sort of soccer obstacle course. I was terrible at it.

Wednesday Andréanne was still sick in the morning. In art we worked on this project that we had started before the break where we have to design a house that is in touch with nature (and it doesn't have to be- preferably it's not- actually possible to make.) It's based on the buildings and drawings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian (please Google and/or Wikipedia him!) My house is probably too "unimaginative" for my teacher's tastes (she didn't say anything to me, but commented on some other students' drawings suggesting they are too plausible), because I designed something that could probably be built. I guess I just prefer to design the possible, since the point is to make a building that gets people in touch with nature (and how can a building which can only exist in the imagination and on paper achieve that goal?) Anyway my building is a house on stilts that straddles a stream, with walkways over it and a big empty space in the middle where the trees grow up over the roof. I am having a very fun time designing it. For the afternoon Andréanne returned to school.. we didn't do anything interesting though.

Thursday I did a lot of studying, both in school and after school, for two tests the next day. We also got our mid-term grades back and I am happy with mine. For French, History, Economy, German, and English I don't have grades (the first three because they are way hard, German because the only things I understand in that language are "ja" and "nein", and English because it's way too easy.) The grades are given exclusively on tests so even though I participate in many classes I just don't have a grade. But for the other classes I do, here are the results in case you'd like to know: Math- 5, IT- 4.5, Geography- 4, Biology- 4.5, Chemistry- 5, Art- 6, Phy Ed- 5. With the biology, math, chemistry, and art I am proud of myself because I am doing better than like more than half the class.

Friday we had two tests in school. The first one was a history test. I studied quite a lot for it but the questions were really really hard. I ended up answering them all but not with high-quality responses (J'ai écrit un peu n'importe quoi, mais ce n'est pas grave..!) but that's okay. At least I finished the thing. And now I know the order of English monarchs from James I through Oliver Cromwell up to Mary and William's War, so I certainly can't complain... The second test of the day was a math test. I understood the material fine but unfortunately we had finished up on it before the break, so it had been almost a month since we'd worked on vectors and I'd already forgotten anything (sometimes I wonder what the point of cramming so much into my head just to forget it as soon as we've finished up the unit..) Anyway I had revisited the material and so I think I did fine, maybe even quite well, on that test. Friday afternoon I had a chemistry lab where we had did experiments to see the reactions between sulfur and iron (you get a little black stony thing and a room that smells like Yellowstone), what happens when you burn magnesium (it gets crazy bright and you can't look at it because it will damage your eyes), and what happens when you burn copper (it glows orange and makes a green flame.) Besides the sulfur/iron I had done this in previous chemistry labs but it was still fun. At the end I made sure to thank my lab partner profusely for doing all the work (well I did all the cool experiments while she killed her hand writing up the lab report for an hour and a half. But the other lab groups had the same set up- one person writing, one person doing the experiments- so it wasn't completely terrible that I hardly helped.) After school I went to the train station to buy a new bus pass for a month because my other one expires on Monday. Afterward I went home and relaxed around the house.

Yesterday I woke up around 08h30, showered, ate breakfast, surfed the web, did some homework, etc. My host mom and host sister had gone to Fribourg in the morning but there was nothing I needed to do there so I stayed home. Then they came home and we all ate lunch together. At two in the afternoon I skyped with my mom and dad for the first time in a month or maybe a bit longer.. we talked about school for next year (because I've had to sign up for classes through my mom, who met with my school counselor), Swine Flu, and lots of other things. Then I did a bunch more homework. Around nine I skyped with my sister Emily for the first time in a month or so.

Today I got up at eight to do homework (this weekend has been crazy..) For lunch we went to Tata and José's house to eat raclette because it was José's birthday. They won half a wheel of raclette cheese playing Sunday bingo in addition to the WHOLE wheel they had won a couple months ago. So I guess they need people to help them eat all that cheese. After eating we went outside to see the rabbits, chickens, and dog they have. Andréanne and Nicolas went home after that because they wanted to do homework, but Béatrice, Bernard, and I went to a music festival. Every first weekend in May the various band ensembles from all of the various villages in my district (a district is a step down from a canton.. mine is about 10% the size of Hennepin county) hold a festival over three days. Fifteen villages rotate hosting it (it's a huge huge responsibility), my village did it around three years ago. On the Sunday around three is when there is the parade, and people from all corners of the district show up. We went to the village where it was, which is at 200m higher altitude than us. The parade was awesome.. I took pictures but they are on film so I will have to get them developed before I can share them with you. The highlights were definitely the paysans.. farming people wearing their traditional costumes. The whole thing started out with some cattle farmers bringing a decorated (flowers and bells on their heads) herd of cows down the road. The dairy goats came later after some bands had passed.. and still later a herd of very stressed and confused-looking wooly sheep. Not to be confused with the sheep were the "barbus".. that is, bearded men!! They all walked past together in their traditional dress.. the requirement is to have a big bushy paysan beard. Highlight of my life! Also there were lots of really well-done floats, marching bands, and little kids from the village school in various costumes. After the parade we went home right away.. Since then I have been working on even more homework. For once I am looking forward to Monday, because, oddly enough, I have a feeling I will do less work than I did this weekend.